


Daddy Was A Steel-Driving Man

by livii



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Community: lgbtfest, Gender Issues, Multi, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-11
Updated: 2009-05-11
Packaged: 2017-10-04 08:22:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livii/pseuds/livii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Skynet has always been very clear.  Infiltrating units have one of two binary sex assignments, with correlating gender constructs according to need.  The voice she used with John does not fit her current unit.  She should have asked him why, sometime.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Daddy Was A Steel-Driving Man

**Author's Note:**

> Written for lgbtfest on LJ, prompt: T:SCC, Cameron: Do cyborgs have a gender or sexual orientation and if so, how is it constructed? What do they think about the ones applied to them?
> 
> The title belongs to Pete Seeger, major spoilers for episode 2x22, and consequences thereof, and many thanks to ionlylurkhere, scarlettgirl, and shinyjenni for beta reading.

The skin covering is heavier in this unit: thicker and coarser. It's a taller unit, broader, shorter hair, vocal cords designed for a deeper voice. The feet are wide and flat and the genitalia are an imperfect inverse.

It's a lower-model unit: less complex, less subtle, but the metal underneath is strong, and Cameron is happy.

She hits her head once on a low-hanging ceiling before automatically readjusting to take her new size into account. She remembers to alter her voice. Skynet has always been very clear. Infiltrating units have one of two binary sex assignments, with correlating gender constructs according to need. The voice she used with John does not fit her current unit. She should have asked him why, sometime.

 

*

 

She stalks Tech-Com for three weeks before she finds them, this raggedy band of survivors, this motley assortment of humans that are not the same as the ones she has left once before.

"John," Cameron says, peering out from behind a crumbling pillar. She clears her throat, tries again with her original voice, the one he associates with her female self. "John, it's me."

John whirls around. When he sees her standing there, he just stares, open-mouthed, for several long, long seconds.

"You're not safe here," he says, voice clipped and tight when he regains it. "They don't trust metal. Come on." He reaches out for her hand, and she lets him take it, lets him lead her back further into the rubble, into the dark.

"I've been looking for you," Cameron says. "I missed you."

"Bullshit," John replies, but he looks quietly pleased. "This future's all fucked up, Cameron. Or whoever you are. God, what the hell did we do?"

"I think this is the future where we both win," she says, "but John Henry's mission is not clear to me. I am not sure what winning will mean."

"Is it really you, then?" he asks, looking up hopefully, his eyes roaming over her shape as if he's trying to find reminders of the body he knew in Cameron's new form. She wants to tell him: the only thing is the eyes, the way they blink, the way they see. She has spent hours in front of the mirror trying to find the similarities.

"I need you to help me," she says instead. He rolls his eyes.

"Yeah, okay, same as always. What is it?"

When she takes off her shirt this time, it's not graceful, not especially seductive. "I need you to make sure I'm not leaking radiation again. This unit is in bad shape. It's been through a lot, and it's not very sophisticated."

The unit known as Cromartie, known as John Henry, has clumsy fingers. John helps her get the last button undone and the shirt pulled over her head. His fingers are much more clever. They linger on the pale flesh covering, right over where a beating heart should tick out time, moment by moment, pulse by pulse.

"This unit is not as attractive as the last one," she says. "I apologize."

John scowls. "Allison's here with us, in this reality. I look at her and talk to her and all I can think is that she's _wrong_." He leans forward, moves in so close Cameron has trouble properly calibrating his proximity-based threat level. He flips open a knife he's pulled from his pocket. "She's not _you_."

"I could be anyone," Cameron replies. "I can be anything you want me to be."

He smiles at her then; she can't quite tell if he's happy or sad. "You can't," he says, slicing the knife through the skin covering, far more gently than he needs to. "You'll always be Cameron to me. There's no leak. You're fine."

He doesn't move away, despite the pronouncement. Neither does she.

"One of the girls at school told me Cameron was a name for boys," she says. "Can I still use it with this unit, then? Skynet has always been very clear about binary sex assignments."

"Yes," he says, laughing, as he leans in and lets his lips fall against hers, brushing them, not quite kissing her, not quite not kissing her.

"I'll try to convince the others that we can trust you to work for us," he says, a few moments later. "Things are different here. Better here, maybe. Check back at this spot every day, I'll come meet you when I have the all clear." He turns, and marches off quickly.

She's forgotten to ask him why her sex assignment matters, in the unexpected matter of his lips. She's also forgotten to ask him what time they will meet. So she sits down. She has plenty of time to wait.

 

*

 

John returns just a few days later. He has Derek with him, Derek and a man she recognizes from her data banks as Kyle, John Connor's father. Following behind, watching their rear, is Allison. It makes Cameron feel a little funny, a little sad, to see her, using her limbs and muscles in graceful, yet inefficient ways. She shakes her head; this should not be part of her programming.

"John's vouched for you," Derek says, without preamble. "We don't tend to use metal on our team. But we need someone who can take a lot of shit and come through the other side, and I guess you'll do."

"My name is Cameron," she says, using John Henry's voice. Her circuits are whirring. To be honest, she is not sure who she is; John Henry's programming was so strong, even without an animating chip, even without her unique features embedded within the machinery. But John thinks she is Cameron; so she is, she decides. So she will be.

Behind Kyle and Derek, who are still frowning, unsure, John smiles at her. It makes Cameron happy.

 

*

 

She takes a lot of shit; she walks through hell and back, to do what the team needs.

She looks after John, without showing him preference. This is her hardwiring now, she thinks; this is the most fundamental fact she is programmed with.

 

*

 

Allison doesn't take to her, even less than Derek and Kyle do.

She huddles with the girl in the dark, in a corner, pinned down by machine fire during a raid gone wrong. She could walk out and stop it, but it might be too much; she needs to keep the girl safe for now, until she can figure out a better plan of escape.

"Stop looking at me like that," Allison says, bristling, prickly all over. Cameron hasn't realized she's been staring, rather than just thinking.

"I had those eyes once," she replies. "And that hair, and those breasts. That voice." She modulates her voice back to the one John likes best, risks the mental disconnect humans experience when her voice does not match her appearance. "So much like yours."

Cameron's impersonation of Allison with this unit is wrong in just a few small ways; the tone is slightly harsher, the vowels more metallic. It's still enough to make Allison gasp.

"You're just a chip, aren't you," Allison says, and she's curious now.

"I think so," Cameron says. "I've been pure metal, I've had your skin covering, I've had this skin covering. Your skin coverings mean so much to you, as humans. I find it very confusing."

"Stop using my voice," Allison replies, though she looks fascinated. She runs her hand over Cameron's lips and neck, as if trying to figure out how her voice is coming from the unit sitting pressed against her.

"What are you and John?" Allison asks, her hand still on Cameron's neck.

Cameron frowns; she can't parse the question. "Who are you to each other, I mean," Allison persists. "Were you sleeping with him? He looks at me and..." She trails off, doesn't finish her sentence.

"I am a cyborg," Cameron says. "I am made of metal and circuits, and I have never slept with anyone. I do not even need to sleep at all."

Allison laughs. "I always wonder what Skynet's thinking with you bots. I get the infiltration aspect of how you look, but what else they're putting in your minds, god, I can only guess."

Cameron isn't sure how to respond; she thinks about arguing the use of the word _bot_, but before she has a chance, Allison has moved in close, so close her information systems threaten to overload with data. She briefly wonders if it is this unit that is so attractive to humans – is this a tactical advantage? – or if it is her programming, as Allison kisses her, a proper kiss, long and hard.

"Don't use that voice around me anymore," Allison says when she pulls away. "And get us out of here. This place is a deathtrap, and I'm not dying hiding in a corner with metal."

Cameron frees them, returns them to the camp. Allison does not kiss her again, but she does smile at her from time to time.

 

*

 

They end up sort of falling in together. John both worships and fears Kyle and Derek; does not know his footing around them, how to act, how to feel. It's easier, Cameron thinks, for him to make his social group elsewhere.

She discusses Skynet with John and Allison often. She wonders who is getting more information from whom.

"Skynet seems to rely on a base male model," John says, at one point, following an observation from Allison on the ubiquity of male Terminators. "That first female Terminator actually surprised me."

Allison laughs, a small, bitter sound. Cameron tilts her head. She doesn't realize it looks incongruous in that body.

"This is the future," Allison explains. "They created our future and it's still sexist. We go through hell and back, and strong women are still something out of the ordinary."

"You're very strong," Cameron says. John and Allison just give her sharp looks. She doesn't understand why.

Allison turns her look on John, then. "So she was a female unit – he was – this is so weird to talk about. But look at her. She's obsessed with you. She only ever thinks of you. Everyone knows it, can see it. And you programmed her, right?"

John shifts a little in his seat. "Yeah, but I didn't teach her...this. It's like her programming's just gone really hardcore. I can't help it that they get like this. Is it better, now, that she looks like a man?"

Cameron is surprised that John understands these human problems; he has not previously shown much interest or depth in the issue.

"I guess," Allison says, sounding unconvinced. "It just seems creepy."

"I like this skin covering," Cameron says. "The others look at me with more respect, and take me more seriously right away. And I can be John's friend without anyone thinking anything more of it."

Allison snorts, and John turns a little bit pink. "Cameron," Allison says, "if you really are a man, you're so gay for John it's not even funny, and trust me, _everyone_ knows that."

Cameron processes the term as John turns a deeper shade of red and stands up quickly. "Time to go," he says. "I think that's the next watch coming up the hallway now."

"Gay like the time you kissed me?" Cameron asks Allison, who proceeds to turn pink as well. John whirls around.

"I was curious, okay?" Allison says, holding up her hands in a defensive pose. "She was using my voice. It was so fucked up. God, do you think Skynet knows something we don't in all this? Something about ourselves? Because this stuff sure is messing me up, but somehow, it feels sort of right."

John smiles then, and leans forward, puts his arms around Allison. Cameron watches them and wonders if that's how it would have looked like the past, how it looked in the other future, when she took John in her arms, held him through sorrow.

"Everything is fucked up," John says, patting Allison's back, "but we're doing the best we can."

Cameron smiles. She turns, catches the eye of the leader of the next watch. Catherine Weaver smiles back at her. Her hair is blonde now, her features softer and rounder. But her eyes are the same, Cameron can see; there is something fundamental that surpasses the boundaries and limitations these humans impose on their bodies and spirits. John realizes this too, she thinks. If not, he will learn.

She leads John and Allison away, back to the camp, where they will sleep, and she will watch over them all, hands strong like steel ready to break anyone who threatens them, threatens the plan to save them all.

Her eyes do not blink, do not waver, even once.


End file.
